“Because Coil’s dad won’t take a chance on sending his kid to prison.”

“When’s he going to get that chance? Don’t tell me you’re going to let him go.”

“I want him to think I will. And you never know, he might come in handy down the line.”

“What the fuck are you saying-‘down the line’?”

“Some of the shit Coil’s told me, Monks has got a crazy streak,” Freeboot said, with a mocking edge. “Maybe he’ll come around.”

She stood up from her chair and stabbed toward his chest with a shaking finger.

“Quit fucking around, man. A dumbass trick like this could bring us down,” she said.

Freeboot gave her a heavy-lidded, measuring look. Shrinkwrap was a psychologist and very smart, but her buttons were easy to push.

“Where’s Coil?” he said.

“In our cabin,” she said warily. She knew the gaze she was seeing.

“What’s he doing?”

“Getting high, probably.”

“I need him to find me some insulin.”

“Hey, lighten up. He just got back from a mission.”

“I’m trying to make him feel more like a maquis, Shrink. Let’s face it, he’s a mama’s boy.”

She flinched. She was more than fifteen years older than Glenn Monks-the latest in a long series of the bad boys she craved.

“What are you going to do, B &E a drugstore?” she said sullenly. “There’s no place within a hundred miles of here open this time of night.”

“Don’t you think maybe I know that?” Freeboot swigged from the mescal bottle again, still watching her.

She lowered her gaze, defeated.

“Have him hack the local pharmacy records and find somebody around here who buys that stuff,” Freeboot told her. “Old people, or a woman living alone. Then call down to Base and tell Callus to go get it. Mask and gun, scare the shit out of them. Take everything they got, needles, the works. Give them a couple hundred bucks and tell them if they keep quiet, he won’t be back. They call the sheriffs, he will. And I want everybody moving with the fucking speed of light, starting now.”

Freeboot watched her thin blue-jeaned ass hurry up the ladder. He drank again from the bottle, a long burning pull, then leaned over the computer’s keyboard and brought up a master file.

“Where you think Hammerhead’s at?” he asked Taxman. Hammerhead wasn’t hell for brains, but he was fierce and loyal.

“He did okay tonight,” Taxman said.

“I’ve been working him up, about Marguerite and Captain America.”

“He’s right on the edge, for sure.”

“You want him in on this next one?”

“Let’s have a scalp hunt tomorrow night, give him a chance to get savage,” Taxman said. “If he makes it, I’ll take him along.”

He spoke with his usual quiet drawl. Somebody who didn’t know better might mistake it for timidness. Taxman was ex-Special Forces, who’d left the army in disgust after the Gulf War because there wasn’t enough close-range killing. Now he got his fill of it, leading the almost thirty maquis that he had trained so far. The most experienced ones were out there in the world, unknown to anyone but each other-drifting, quietly stirring up anger in homeless camps and ghettos, and waiting to be summoned for their next mission.

Freeboot turned back to the computer screen and scrolled. A collage of newspaper headlines appeared, dated several weeks apart over the past months.

SEDONIA STUNNED BY KILLINGS

GROSSE POINTE POLICE TIGHTLIPPED

DOUBLE MURDER IN DARIEN

There were eleven sub-files from the past two years, made up of clippings about the killing of rich citizens in different parts of the country. The outrage tended to start as long front-page reports, only to shrink and disappear as police admitted their frustration.

The “Calamity Jane” file was the latest one. Freeboot transferred the clipping from the disc to the master folder. He had an online search done daily for news about any of the murders, and he read it all carefully. It was important to stay on top of developments.

“I think it’s time for us to let The Man know what he’s dealing with,” Freeboot said. There hadn’t been any reason for police to link the killings yet, at least officially. The maquis had played it safe at first, choosing low-security targets while they perfected their operations.

Taxman nodded. “Let’s jack it up a notch.” He knew a lot of ways to get under people’s skins. Dumping the golf clubs at the homeless camp had been his idea.

“What you got in mind?”

“Pull up Emlinger on the screen.”

Freeboot scrolled farther down the master file, to an alphabetical list of names. There were several hundred of them, mostly men but a few women. Each name was followed by a short description.

He paused at an entry that began:

Emlinger, Robert James, b 1951.

Res 1155 Laurel Lane, Atherton, CA.

Pres/CEO of several companies since 1985. Restructuring/outsourcing specialist w history of diverting assets to execs in bankruptcies/laying off employees wo benefits.

Atherton was a several-hour drive south of here. The FBI knew that serial killers tended to start close to home, then branch out geographically. Freeboot had been careful to do it the other way around.

He double-clicked on Emlinger’s name, bringing up a longer file. It included photographs of Emlinger and his family; a plan of their spacious house and grounds, including the security system; city and area maps; and a detailed analysis of their personal habits and daily routines. Emlinger looked like a generic corporate executive, with gold-rimmed glasses and perfect teeth, brimming with confidence in his own net worth. Mrs. Emlinger was a Stepford-type trophy wife, almost twenty years younger than her husband, and very good-looking.

“She’s got a thing about jade jewelry, antique Chinese stuff,” Taxman said, tapping her photo with his finger. “He bought her a collection of it for a wedding present-used to belong to the Princess of Monaco, or some such shit. If that ends up in a Dumpster, they’re gonna read the mail.”

He stepped to a dinner plate where several lines of white powdered meth were laid out. The tiny crystals glittered like broken glass.

Freeboot took a closer look at the computer photo of Mrs. Emlinger. She was a green-eyed blonde. No doubt jade looked good on her.

“I like the way you think, young man,” Freeboot said. “You got a future with this company.”

“I’m going to name you Circe, baby,” Freeboot told the girl who had been in the sauna with him earlier. They were naked, lying face to face, in the afterglow of energetic sex. “You know who she was?”

She shook her head shyly. Her eyes were big liquid pools of adoration, pupils dilated from the finger hash that came from picking sinsemilla buds.

“A witch. She turned dudes into animals. And you turn me into a wild beast. A swine.”

He lunged face first into her breasts, growling and nuzzling her with his bristly beard. She squirmed, cooing with delight like a child.

They were in the structure that Freeboot had named the Garden. From the outside, it was a log building, like all the others here-a crude bathhouse, with a big stone basin for the hot springs that flowed from the ground at a perfect 112 degrees. But inside, he had transformed it, stocking it with things that he hadn’t even known existed until he was able to buy them. Then he learned about them fast.

The rough log walls were hung with old tapestries from Europe. Thick Persian rugs carpeted the plank floor. A two-thousand-year-old Greek statuette sat on top of a Chippendale console. The central piece was the Louis XV king-sized bed that Freeboot and Circe were lying on. Part of a wall had to be chainsawed out to get that in. The moisture and warmth from the hot springs maintained a jungle of exotic potted plants. There was every kind of liquor and every kind of dope. Freeboot wanted the feeling in here to be overpowering-lush. But above all, the Garden was for sex. The brides were a reward for the maquis who performed their missions well, and a tormenting lure to recruits.